You may have heard about our pottery bowl event – 1,000 Petaluma Bowls. Last year, we launched this awareness raising event to help address hunger in our community. This year, we are doing it again to directly support PPSC’s programs that bring healthy meals to our community’s most vulnerable and food insecure individuals. Even though our economy is recovering, thousands of people in Sonoma County still struggle in poverty. Increasingly, more home-bound seniors are receiving a hot meal (and daily security check) every day from our Meals on Wheels program. The number of seniors, families and individuals in Petaluma who are “food insecure” is astonishing.

Our event was a tremendous success last year – over 20 individuals and companies hosted pottery bowl painting parties, to create hundreds of bowls for the event. It’s that time again, we are asking you to host a pottery bowl painting party for your friends or colleagues. We will bring the bisque-fired pottery bowls and the glazes to your home for you to paint and then donate to the sale. Our Executive Director will join you and your guests to share about PPSC and our programs. All of the bowls from your party will be fired by our partner studio and then auctioned at the 1,000 Petaluma Bowls event in November. Here is where the fun starts, you and your friends invite other to come to buy your bowl or anyone else’s bowl. We want it to be a fun way to share with each other while helping us fill the bowls of so many hungry people in Petaluma.

The event will be on Friday, November 25th at Hotel Petaluma. We hope to have 1,000 handmade pottery bowls for this event. There will be great food, entertainment and a lot of really great pottery created by some of the Bay Area’s best clay and glass artists and studios, and by people in our community. Now imagine 1,000 smiling faces. With the sale of each bowl at our event, we will be able to expand our programs to better support these families and individuals. Here’s how: If we sell 6 bowls at $10+ each and raise $62, we can provide daily meals and care for a week to one more senior. 100 bowls sold translates to daily meals for about 16 seniors. And, it’s a big jump, If we sell 1,000 bowls, those funds will provide daily meals for a week to an additional 161 seniors!

To host a party, please pick a date (or two) in September and October, fill-out and return the attached form to us as soon as you can. You can fill in the names of your friends you want to invite. We will send you a draft invite to share with your friends – email us – admin@petlaumapeople.org if you have questions.